Your WooCommerce website will convert more browsers to buyers when it’s optimized for performance and functionality. Your customers demand an intuitive and pleasurable experience, and you should too.

There are many ways to optimize a website, and this guide covers three foundational categories: speed, operation, and add-ons. It suggests strategies and offers resources for trimming down a bloated website and alleviating migraine-inducing management.

Hand your IT team this guide and have them make sure your WooCommerce conversion optimization is on track.

Improving Website Load Times & Reliability

The faster you get your products in front of shoppers, the more likely they are to continue shopping. One Akamai report, which looked at optimal load times for conversions, found that:

Two-second delays on eCommerce sites reduce browsing times by more than half.

For peak conversions, websites need load times between 1.8 to 2.7 seconds across all device types.

For the lowest bounce rates, pages should load between 700 ms to 1.2 seconds.

If your website’s lagginess is costing you sales, here are some boxes to check that’ll keep your customers more engaged and converting.

Optimize Media

Online stores need plenty of demo videos and product images to make sales. The more accurate and detailed the visual information you give shoppers, the more likely they are to buy your products. Research on the impact of images on eCommerce stores shows a twofold increase in conversions just by having two product images rather than one.

But all of these images and videos take a toll on your site’s performance and your sales. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the cost of serving all of those high-resolution images and videos to customers can really add up—and dramatically lower page load speeds, further suppressing conversions.

To combat performance problems from bloated product pics, make sure you optimize your images and videos for the web. Here are some online tools and resources to help.

Covered by Liquid Web’s Managed WooCommerce Hosting

Every image is automatically compressed for high performance.

Video Compression Tools

You can use video hosts like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia to embed product videos without a big hit to your performance. But if you want video integrated into your site’s design (e.g. as a homepage header), you’ll want to compress it to as small a file as possible for quick load times. Here are some video compression resources.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Optimizing file size isn’t the only step in serving static files to customers quickly. Using content delivery networks to serve consumers high-quality content wherever they live is no longer an optional part of your WooCommerce conversion optimization process.

CDNs can significantly cut down on page load times for customers who visit your site from the other side of the globe. Most top-tier hosting options now offer a built-in CDN option by default, so it’s possible to blend this with your normal month-to-month hosting fees.

Leverage Browser Caching

Another effective strategy for keeping large media files from slowing down your site is to have your developers leverage browser caching. When your customers first visit your site, you can tell their browsers which files (images, HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to save locally. Tell your IT team to make sure they’ve done the following:

Enable GZIP Compression

Any files your server sends to a browser can be compressed or “zipped” before being sent. Compressed files transfer much more quickly, cutting down on bandwidth usage and increasing page load times. Have your IT team configure your server to return zipped content when possible and to run a GZIP compression test to ensure things are running smoothly.

Get the Right Hosting Plan

If you’re currently on a shared plan and you want to boost your site’s speed, consider switching to either a managed hosting account that is optimized for WooCommerce, or if you have internal developer resources to optimize your store, a VPS or dedicated server.

Good website performance starts with finding the right hosting service for your needs and settling on the right hosting package. Many smaller eCommerce stores opt for shared hosting plans because of their low cost, but the smaller price tag usually means slower speeds. Shared hosting is “shared” for a reason—your website is sharing computing resources and data space with other websites on the same server.

Regardless of the type of hosting plan you’re on, you’ll want to also consider these nice-to-haves when looking for a hosting provider:

Customer support – Look for hosts that provide free 24/7 phone support with real people who pick up the phone when your website is down.

Hassle-free scalability – Many hosting companies start you off at a low rate but constantly try and sell you upgrades and extras as your business grows. Look for a plan that lets you scale without the hassle.

Redundancy – Not all web hosts are the same, so look for good customer reviews, strong uptime guarantees, and a robust backup capacity.

Server Access – If you’re going with a dedicated server, you’ll have access to it for making changes, altering code, etc. But not all plans offer access. Check to see before you commit.

Improve Store Operations

Aside from speeding up your site, you can also optimize your store’s performance and boost conversions by streamlining its functionality and increasing its analytics power—allowing your team to spend more time on the areas of the site that need improvement.

Disable/Remove Features You Don’t Need

WordPress plugins bring a lot of functionality to your website, but chances are you won’t need every feature running at once. Cut through the clutter and simplify your admin portal by disabling or removing features you don’t need:

Upgrade Your Store Analytics

Boosting conversions depends on data to deliver valuable customer insights, and Google Analytics can get you a long way. But today’s eCommerce stores require even more granular metrics for managing customer relationships. All of this data can get in the way of running your store.

To combat the flood of information, consider upgrading your analytics to a platform that brings together data from your eCommerce platform, analytics tools, and advertising sources. Platforms like Domo give every decision maker real-time data across all of your analytics sources.

Using data consolidation, you’re also able to pull from more data points. With analytics platforms like Glew.io, you can micro-target your customers to personalize sales and find more revenue opportunities. For example, with Glew.io you can segment customers who only buy with a coupon from customers who pay full price. That means no wasted special offer emails being sent to customers who don’t use them, lowering your email costs and increasing conversions.

Covered by Liquid Web’s Managed WooCommerce Hosting

Improve Shipping and Fulfillment

Your shipping and fulfillment process is another area where you can boost conversion rates. There are plenty of WordPress inventory and shipping plugins that can streamline your process and give you additional functionality.

Add New Features and Merchandising Strategies

After you’ve gotten your WooCommerce site loading fast and streamlined your store’s operation, it’s time to add some new features and strategies that will improve your customer experience and push your conversion rates northward.

Set Up Split Testing

Split testing, or A/B testing, is an effective way to test two versions of a website layout, checkout flow, or similar component to discover which version converts better. A/B testing is how eCommerce owners continually improve the customer experience, and there’s no shortage of testing ideas to increase your conversion rate. WooCommerce owners can use specialized platforms like Google Optimize, Optimizely, or VWO to easily perform split testing on just about anything they can think of. Common eCommerce split tests look at …

Product page designs

Calls-to-Action

Forms

Advertising

Follow-up emails

Product images or videos

Coupon offers

Recognizable security seals

“Thank You” pages

Checkout pages

Product Sizing Tools

No one likes to get a product that doesn’t fit. If your products require sizing, you can increase your customers’ experience and conversion by incorporating a sizing chart into your product pages. Here are some resources to help:

While there’s little to guard against unforeseen issues like website crashes or a declined credit cards, you can fix an overly complicated checkout process or too few payment methods. Here are some resources:

Covered by Liquid Web’s Managed WooCommerce Hosting

Liquid Web offers Jilt free to all customers who have Managed WooCommerce Hosting.

Before you spend thousands of dollars on advertising and SEO, make sure you’ve covered the basics of WooCommerce conversion optimization. Improve your store’s page load times, reliability, and security, and your customers will reward you by converting more.

Chris Lema is our Vice President of Products at Liquid Web. A well-known blogger and public speaker, Chris has led our product teams to develop and launch our Managed WordPress and Managed WooCommerce product lines.